Ta Chen stormed out of the lecture hall with a frowning face, striding with fast steps as if that would help her calm her anger. She clenched her fist tightly, wishing for that damn Ka Seed that senior Hu Guo had given them to get shattered into pieces.

"Ta Chen, Ta Chen, wait..."

The voice of Sa Juan came from behind, continuing to urge her to stop. 

But she didn’t want to stop. She wanted to get to the house and vent her rage at opening the blocked passage. Why was heaven unfair? Why did it create her with such a flaw? Why did it make her weak? Why did it put her in this damn empire?

Sa Juan, having caught up to her, grabbed her from her hand. “Ta Chen, wait…”

“What?” Ta Chen turned sharply, barely holding herself from exploding. “What do you want?”

Sa Juan looked genuinely concerned. “What happened? Is it, senior sister Hu Guo? She did not mean to offend you—"

"Damn her," Ta Chen cursed, her face contorting even more. "I won the argument and she didn’t like it. Damn her."

“What argument?” Sa Juan gave her a confused smile. “Everything she said was true; you’re just… overreacting a little.”

“Overreacting?” Ta Chen could feel her anger going out of control. She needed to stop talking. She needed to just swallow the words and continue on her way home. She needed to…"Which part did I say I was overreacting to? Was it the part where I said that women are burdened with a damn flaw that keeps us weak, that keeps men always above us and keeps us treated like some kind of resou—”

 

Sa Juan forcefully slapped her hand over Ta Chen's mouth. “Shh, shh, shh. Senior Hu Guo was kind enough to not take you seriously, but if the wrong person heard you, you… you could get in serious trouble,” she whispered with a concerned voice. “Don’t you know the punishment for blasphemy?”

Ta Chen uncontrollably stopped at the thought of her being cut down by a saw from above while she was hanging upside down. She drifted her eyes around to see if it was too late. No one was around. She let out a sigh of relief. 

Noticing that she had realized her mistake, Sa Juan let loose of her hand. “Besides, the seed core is not a flaw; it’s a gift given to us women by heaven,” she explained earnestly. “Ask any man if he would rather be borned with this third core and see what they say.'

“I asked Sa Min,” Ta Chen snored. “And that son of whore replied that he thanks heaven every night for not being born as a woman.” 

Sa Juan cocked her head to the side. “Sa Min is…not a man..trust me, he’s a monster. How can anyone refuse the gift of producing one Natural Ka... every month?"

“Yeah,” Ta Chen shook her head, frustrated. “You're right. It’s just that 80% of our sea force gets sucked for a whole week every month by the seed core to nourish those Ka Seeds…”

“That’s not–” Sa Juan tried to cut her off but Ta Chen didn't let her. “leaving us vulnerable that week with only 20% of sea force and slowing down our cultivation progress, which makes men superior. Get your naive face away from me,” she said, then turned away and strided off.

“Have you never read the First Book, Ta Chen?” Sa Juan’s soft, but annoying words followed her from behind. “It teaches us that heaven is just. It gives you something but takes another. This is how the world works. This is….the way of heaven.”

“Damn you and damn that old book of yours,” Ta Chen cursed under her breath.

Natural Kas came into the world through three ways. The first, as Borned Kas of ka wielders; the second, through the seed core that only women had, located just above their sea core.

Every month, during the time of their monthly blood period, the female ka wielders experienced a draining of 80% of their sea force into their seed core. If Ka Seed was put in there at that time, there was a chance for a Natural Ka to be born.

Senior Hu Guo had said that the academy would give them a Ka Seed every month to give birth to a Natural Ka. That wasn’t why Ta Chen was mad, though. Because, whether she planted a Ka Seed or not, her sea force would still get sucked away.

It was those words of Senior Hu Guo, telling her to be happy about her sea force being absorbed that set her on fire. 

---

Once Sa Min left the Cultivation Academy, he went straight west along the lively eastern main street that connected the academy to the heart of Tetra Blessing City. When he arrived at the area filled with merchants and wealthy families, it took him a while to locate the Qing family place. By the time he finally found it, the sunlight was on the brink of fading away.

Keeping an eye on the gate of their residence, he casually strolled down the road toward an inn that was just across their gate.

“Greetings, young master, how can I help?”  

A servant immediately approached him with a warm smile as he crossed the threshold.

Sa Min glanced around.

The dining floor was crowded, tables crammed with people, eating and talking. On one table at the side, there were three men with formal blue robes and black headgear with a metal circle on it. Officers of the Instigation and Justice Office. 

“Do you have any rooms that overlook the street?” he said in his usual cold tone.

The servant nodded gleefully. 

A few minutes later, Sa Min stood before a lattice window, peering through its panes at the busy street below.

The servant's voice kept droning on in the background.

This is the perfect view. Sa Min smiled, satisfied with the room and the discreet window that made it difficult for people to notice him. Within the house of the Qing family across the street, he could see a few guards walking around the courtyard. 

Now, let's see if the message has any truth to it.

He turned to the woman who was still trying to convince him about the room. "How much a day?"

The servant was surprised at him convincing this quickly. “With food, we normally charge 62 gold coins. But I'll leave it to you at 60.”

Sa Min calmly reached into his robe. Two pouches were there. One was filled with 5 force apples that Hu Guo had given them before the class. She’d said that the academy would provide this much every week until they opened their essence core.

The other pouch held gold coins.

In the Eastern Plane, there were two currencies. The force apples were used in the field of cultivation, while the gold coins were for goods and services that were not related to the cultivation aspect of ka wielders.

To keep things balanced, and keep both currencies needed, there was a law in the Xi Empire that forbade trading and exchanging normal goods and services with force apples. If someone was caught doing that, there was a big financial penalty waiting for him.

Naturally, there was a bureau in the city where people could change currencies. The exchange rate stayed generally fixed: 1 force apple for 6000 gold coins. 

Sa Min counted out 60 gold coins from 95 without adding one more or one less before he handed them to the servant.

 

“Thank you, young master.” The servant nodded happily. “Have a good—-” And Sa Min tossed two more gold coins. 

“Thank you for your generosi—”

“For this month’s journal, and bring a towel with it.”

She smiled to brush away her embarrassment. “Of course, just give it a few moments and they’ll be here along with your meal.”

And sure thing, a few moments later, she came back with his meal and journal. 

Sa Min closed the door, lit up the lamp as the sunlight had vanished, and then dragged a chair in front of the window. As he settled into the chair, a leg over a leg, he opened the journal, his eyes on the resident of the Qing family.

I don’t know if I can catch something useful from a family that has been, supposedly, kidnapping people and sacrificing them for three years without being noticed by the Investigation and Justice Office of the local army.

Sa Min kept his eyes there for about twenty minutes. He managed to notice nothing interesting, besides the man he believed to be the elder son entering the lit main hall. No trace of Qing Lian or his father.

Sighing, Sa Min turned his attention to the journal. He knew that this way of doing things was probably useless: going to the Common-tier library to search for a Yantra that he himself had no clue about, and watching from a window if a powerful family was involved in murdering people and searching for a Key...

He understood that these attempts were probably a waste of time. But, this was all he could do now, and he was with this weak cultivation base. 

He either stayed, doing nothing and let his mind trouble him, or made these desperate attempts. 

He had chosen the latter.

Sa Min frowned slightly, flipping the page, searching if some interesting events had taken place last month. The journals were the official way to disseminate news across the Xi Empire. They were owned by the White Crow Association, which belonged to the Ministry of Information. 

That's why Sa Min never really took anything he read in them as real. He knew very well how governments around the world controlled information and used it to propagate their own interests, manipulating their own people.

*[Jian Bai of the Imperial Academy deservedly won the Eastern Plane Championship…]*

*[The Poisonous Snakes Mercenary continues to wreak havoc in Gansu Province…]*

*[Two Heavenly Union Immortals have been spotted in the Kensey Empire with the Minister of Defense.]*

A spark of interest passed through Sa Min’s eyes when they landed on this particular title.

*[The Xi Empire responded by raising its defenses in the Tight Sea, making a clear statement that any violation of the Treaty of Nine Nations will be faced with force.]*

This is not good. Sa Min tossed the journal onto the bed behind him. The tension between Xi Empire and Kensey Empire is growing, and that’s exactly what the Heavenly Union wants.

Since the Heavenly Union and its allies had been kicked out of the Eastern Plane after they had colonized it for years, they hadn’t been able to extract any real influence here, either from the people who deposed them very much or from the nine emperors who held a council after the colonization ended and created a law called the Law of Belief. 

The Law of Belief simply considered the Heavenly Union as a heretic organization that possessed rebellion beliefs that went clearly against the Temple of the Thousand Swords, and so against the heaven itself, and so any nation in this plane, allied with, adopted any of their ideologies, or even brought any member of the Heavenly Union to the Eastern Plane as an enemy who declared war against all the Eastern Plane, and should face the anger of all Eastern Plane.

This law made it extremely difficult for the Heavenly Union to secularize this plane. And it also kept the Eastern Plane isolated from the rest of the world.

This, until 209 years ago, when the current Emperor Ishino Uchitoki of the Kensey Empire came to power. 

When I was Immortal, I heard rumors about him thinking that the Temple of the Thousand Swords beliefs needed to be reformed to suit this modern era. Sa Min cast a brief look at the Qin family resendant before standing up. But to call members of the Heavenly Union here… a war is coming.

Sa Min could smell it. His over-600-years intuition told him that. A bloody war was coming and it would engulf all of the Eastern Plane. 

He took off his boots, gray robe and the small underpant. I need to be strong then. I need to at least pass the Bottom Realm and reach rank 7, to not get caught in the middle of this war.

Completely naked, Sa Min returned to sit on his chair, crossing his right leg over the left. 

In the Eastern Plane, ka wielders often, if not always, cultivate while sitting with crossed legs. However, it was not necessary to do that. You could cultivate however you like as long as you are comfortable. 

In the Western Plane, ka wielders cultivated while waiting for their bus.

As long as you could concentrate on manipulating your sea force, you could even cultivate while under a comfortable blanket.

Sa Min liked to cultivate on the chair.

As he made himself comfortable on the chair, Sa Min took a deep breath. The reason he took off his clothes was because he knew he would get really sweaty.

I should probably buy a new robe.

This was the last thing he thought of, before he closed his eyes.

Cultivation began!